1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printers such as a printer for a computer, a printer of facsimile equipment, a laser printer, an LED printer, a liquid crystal printer, etc, and particularly to an electrophotographic printer for forming a visible image on a recording medium with a developer according to picture information by means of an electrophotographic system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The electrophotographic system was employed for copy machines originally. In recent years, however, the electrophotographic system has come to be widely used also in picture output devices, that is, printers of the kind as described above, because of its high printing quality, high printing speed, and low noises.
In conventional electrophotographic printers, generally, an electrostatic latent image on a photosensitive body is made visible with a developer and the thus developed visible image is transferred from the photosensitive body onto recording medium such as recording paper. In a fixing device, thereafter, the recording paper carrying the thus transferred visible image is sandwiched between a pair of fixing rollers so that the visible image is fixed on the recording paper by means of heat and pressure. In such a conventional electrophotographic printer, however, there has been a possibility that the recording paper is jammed in the fixing device during transportation of the recording paper.
Upon occurrence of recording paper jamming during transportation of the recording paper in an electrophotographic printer as described above, conventionally, a side wall of a housing is fully opened to take out the jammed recording paper. In this case, there have been problems that such a work to fully open the side wall is troublesome and that external light may be radiated on a photosensitive body when the side wall is fully opened to thereby shorten the life of the photosensitive body. A further problem is that it is difficult to remove recording paper sandwiched between a pair of fixing rollers of a fixing device even if the side wall is fully opened and there is a risk of damage of the recording paper unless the paper is taken out with skill.